


Miss the Jump

by bellygunnr



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27485797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellygunnr/pseuds/bellygunnr
Summary: The Master Chief cannot rest here. Not here, not anywhere.Set in Halo 1: Keyes.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

When’s the last time you rested? Your hands are still numb from cryo-storage. The _Truth and Reconciliation_ doesn’t look any different from when you last saw it– how many days ago? Hours? Weeks? You have no idea. The ceiling’s caving in down that corridor. Parasites are screaming at the end of the other, and you can hear Covenant howling in their guttural way deeper inside the ship. You press on because you have no other choice. Electrical arcs dance across your armor. Your mouth tastes of iron. You bit your tongue on the teleport in.

That’s the worst part, you think. Your tongue hurts like a mother and you can’t even put your hand to your mouth in a sympathetic manner. You can only swallow the blood and spit and hope your damaged boots don’t lose traction when the steel floors tilt underneath you. Metal crunches as you lash out with an armoured hand, plunging reinforced fingers into the ship’s siding, but between the compromised superstructure and your half-ton weight, all you manage to do is peel back siding as your corridor collapses.

It dumps you gracelessly onto the lower decks, but the world becomes dark. You squint your eyes against your helmet’s internal lighting system, teeth bared in pain. This part of the ship is completely destroyed, it seems, but the built-in RADAR is alight with signatures. You can even hear the labored gurgling and skitter of limbs beyond the pounding of your head. You fire your rifle instinctively.

The muzzle flash illuminates bodies. Enhanced sight lends you the still images of flesh jumping as its penetrated and burns into your retinas the overgrown faces of Marines. The next body you get close to takes the butt of a pistol to the skull. You kick it aside before it can block your passage.

There’s no time to dwell on the fate of the crew. Down this tunnel, the doors are sealed shut, but the one ahead is stuck wide open. There’s even lights and more Covenant soldiers, running from their own zombie brethren. They ignore you as you march on. You cannot afford to stop, let alone waste ammo.

You hope they feel the same. This enemy should be a shared one, and yet you’ve spent as much time killing them as you have the Flood, with no end in sight. You wonder if there will ever be an end to this war. You wonder if this is all your fault as you pump another balloon-like spider creature full of lead.

Its viscera collects in the tread of your boots. The next ship door spits sparks at you, apparently spiteful that you’d dare request entrance. Or perhaps warning you– because your path ends here.

There’s nothing but a hole. Here, it’s made clear that the _Truth and Reconciliation_ has plowed itself into the earthen face of a planet, spilling her guts freely into its rocky interior. The bitter tang of coolant floods your nostrils and the rap-tap-tap of a Geiger counter assaults your ears. What had Cortana said?

That the reactors were critical, or at the very least, damaged?

She’s speaking now. You can’t really hear her. There’s the other half of the deck about fifteen feet away. If you do it right, you could clear that distance from a crouch, maybe even take out the Elites warring behind collapsed support columns.

You bend your knees. They sizzle and pop with pain. The suit grinds.

You jump. Hot needlepoints flare out all across your skin and your muscles abruptly abort the action, sending you tumbling head-first into the pit. There’s screaming– yours or Cortana’s, you can’t tell, and it all becomes muffled anyway as a pit of coolant softens your fall.

For a terrifying moment, you succumb to the pain and the impact, to the hot-cold sensation of liquid seeping into your exoskeleton. Your lungs flutter, starved of air, and blood dribbles past your lips. Black dirt crumbles beneath your clawing hands as you start to drag yourself forward and up. There’s a shore there– has to be, you saw it, a cavern of packed earth and porous stone that glowed with plasma shield installments. Up, up, gasping within broken ribs as your head breaks the surface, writhing back to your feet because there’s lumbering beasts reaching for you.

Plasma fire dissipates the rest of your shields. You respond with an entire clip from your assault rifle.

“We need to find a way back to the ship, Chief. Let’s keep going.”

You reload. You rip a shotgun out of a monster’s hands and kill it in the same motion.

You walk forward. You have no other way to go.

You shut your mind off. You wish you could shut your body off, too.


	2. Placeholder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supplies are scarce and must be preciously defended.

There’s a medkit. You can see its white plastic peak out from underneath the collapsed body of a marine. It even glows, showing off that same UNSC R&D that permits you to battle your way through alien forces with just a shotgun. The presence of that medkit subsumes all your other goals– whatever else you were here for is nothing compared to the prospect of some biofoam and painkillers. But before you could indulge, you had to kill. You had to move and keep moving until the only thing living in this cavern was you.

Easier said than done. You determine your perimeter to be a six foot circle around the medkit and its corpse. You defend it with a shotgun, and failing that, your armoured fists, happy to turn yourself into a cudgel to get what you needed. The Flood-rotted flesh gives easily when you punch it. It sloughs off with a rush of blood and pus when you grab a handful and rip. The limbs break with frightening ease. You find yourself glad of the weakness, as it makes defending your ring far easier, and preserves your precious stocks of ammo and explosives.

You’re not sure Cortana likes it, though. From what little you hear of her, she seems distressed by your violence, yet not enough to break you out of your reverie. She’s background noise to the intermittent gunfire and screaming of Covenant, a mere reprieve from everything else. You twist on your heel to meet the next target and find yourself empty.

Nothing’s alive. Or, well, nothing’s moving. There’s a pile of dead to show for your efforts and the medkit is still bright and shiny and clean, just waiting for you to open it. You slow down long enough to roll over the dead Marine and take his place with a thump. With filthy, grimy hands, you crack open the kit– and find it bursting with much-needed supplies.

“Cortana,” you grind out. “Armour.”

The MJOLNIR is far less unwieldy with an AI to commandeer it. You feel the pressure around your body disappear as Cortana cracks open your hard shell. The minute it finishes opening, she projects herself onto her visor, arms crossed over her chest in a definitively scolding manner.

“What do we say?” Cortana says, eyebrow raised.

“Thank you,” you reply, bowing your head sheepishly.

“You’re welcome. And that was reckless,” she adds.

You grunt in acknowledgement while prying your helmet off. Sweat runs off your face and drips from your chin. Your gaze lingers on the bundle of pills and tablets wedged in the bottom of the kit. Supposed to supply a fireteam– a human fireteam. You were a bit left of human, right? 

“Please don’t eat all of them,” Cortana says dryly.

“Okay,” you say. “What do they do?”

“They’re painkillers, Chief. Hold on, Chief, can you tell me where you’re injured?” 

You blink, panting heavily. The question forces you to withdraw and take stock of your body. There’s a deep well of pain radiating from your right flank. Your arms and hands ache with the usual lingering pain. In both your legs there’s the tell-tale twinge of having taken one too many falls.

“Torso, legs, arms,” you state clearly.

You start to pry at your undersuit and get to the rent flesh. Biofoam did not heal– it merely filled and delayed, a placeholder for when true medical help arrived. It would have to keep you put together until this entire war stopped. You time your breathing, inhaling on an internal timer, exhaling at its end, and repeating for as long it takes you to address your wound. For Cortana’s sake, you finish the job with bandages and gauze. 

“How many of these things can I take?” you demand, already reaching for the bundle of pills. 

“Two at most and one tablet,” Cortana replies.

You thumb twice that many into your mouth and swallow them dry. Cortana makes a sound of considerable disgust, but otherwise does not protest– verbally, at least. Her expression alone is enough to make you feel guilty.

But you have a job to do. Neither of you say anything as you slide your helmet back on and let the exoskeleton pressurize around you. There’s an uncomfortable lump where the biofoam is. You’re going to have to be more mindful.

By the time you remember food and water are a thing, you’re already in the midst of another firefight. 


	3. Life Signs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What they came back for.

Parasitized Covenant gave easily when faced with either end of a shotgun. When caught reloading, he simply turned the heavy weapon butt-first and crammed it through their overgrown skulls, the flesh soft and yielding. He'd rip it back out in an ooze of black gore and finish the job on other enemies with the pistol strapped in place on his thigh. The high-cailbre rounds made short work, provided he managed to hit the head or neck, and slowed them down when he missed. Between corridors, he'd wipe up the blood and grime and finish reloading, knowing that he was working to a timer that had already gone off. Speed was still of the essence, though, and Cortana had already found their next mission lock.

The Nav point was an unobtrusive red triangle on his HUD. He was within meters of the target, stopped only by waves of Flood, jammed ship doors, and alien architecture. He licked his dry lips as he considered his options, noting the faint tang of blood and the crust of new scabs. How long had he been in here? When was the last time he rested? His shoulders hurt. His side hurt where the biofoam was still jammed in. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face, seeping into the bottom of his helmet--

"Chief, focus. We have to keep moving," Cortana says, her voice loud. "Let's go. Keyes is still alive. I can see it."

Chief checks both his weapons and lurches back into motion at her behest. He lets his mind go the minute he sees more parasites.

By the time he's fought through their ranks, he's bleeding again. An unsettling warmth is blooming in his side, no doubt because of the ruptured biofoam, and the black underskin of is armor is torn on his arms. The air is simultaneously both hot and cold as he registers it in some primal part of his brain. The rest of him is zeroed in on the warship's command console. Despite the still-functional lighting, it looks eerily dark. Hard to look at.

"No human signatures," Cortana says.

Chief moves one foot in front of the other. His steps are heavy, his body tired. The suit is working double time to carry him from the fritzing ship door and up the ramp. The Covenant had such interesting engineering, didn't they? Solid-light projections in place of buttons and switches. Granted, the control surface was gone now, subsumed by an almighty amalgamation of flesh and parasite, its surface slick and glinting underneath harsh artificial lighting.

"Keyes," Cortana says forlornly. "You know-- you _know_ \-- what he'd want us to do."

Captain Keyes was dead according to the neural implants in his skull. According to his HUD, he was one big red spot, flickering in time with the intermittent scans of his motion tracker. He was grateful that, somehow, Keyes had bound himself and the parasite to the Covenant control surfaces, as it meant that he wouldn't have to fight him.

Fight it.

He would still have to kill it, of course. There was no point in dwelling. Keyes' overgrown eye sockets did not follow his hand as he lifted it, forming it into a crude claw that he uses to puncture the seething mass of flesh and breach the fragile bones still intact underneath. His HUD stops registering an enemy the same moment he gets a grip on the neural implants. With a grunt, he rips the technology out, careful not to crush the chips.

"Let's go," Cortana says, voice soft.

Chief shakes his arm clean of the gore and slots the chips into his helmet.

 _Let's go_ , he repeats. 

There was still more to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand thats it! this game was good


End file.
